If you use Google Photos to backup your photos and videos, here’s some bad news for you. Starting June 1, 2021, Google is putting an end to the unlimited free High Quality storage option in Google Photos. This means that any photo or video uploaded on Google Photos from June 1, 2021, will count against your Google account storage.
The company first announced this change in November last year. Google has offered an unlimited High Quality backup option in Google Photos for years now. It puts an end to the unlimited free storage tier when Google Photos is used by millions of people worldwide to back up their precious memories.
Free Up Storage Space in Your Google Account
Ahead of the June 1 deadline, Google has introduced several tools to help you free up storage space in your Google account. There’s a tool that will let you find blurry photos and old screenshots in your Google Photos library that you can delete to free up space.
There’s another tool that will give you an estimate of how long the storage space in your Google account will last, depending on your usage. You can also get a breakdown of the storage used in your Google account using the storage manager tool.
The High Quality backup option in Google Photos is also being renamed to “Storage saver.” Any photos or videos that you upload using the “Storage saver” option will be compressed to save on space.
Do note that only photos and videos you upload to Google Photos starting June 1, 2021, will count towards your Google account storage. All the media backed up before it in the High Quality option will continue to be exempt from your account’s storage limit.
If you are a heavy Google Photos user and are running low on space, check out these steps to free up storage space in Google Photos. You can easily free up precious storage space if you have been using Google Photos for a long time.
Subscribe to Google One to Get More Storage Space
If you still find yourself running out of storage space, you can subscribe to a Google One storage plan. The cheapest plan offers 100GB storage and costs $1.99/month or $20 billed annually. There’s also a 200GB plan for $2.99 per month or $30 annually. The 2TB plan costs $9.99/month or $99.99/year.
Google also offers storage plans with 10TB, 20TB, and 30TB of storage for heavy users, which can cost you as much as $149.99/month. The good thing is that the additional storage plans are a part of Google One membership, so you will also get additional perks like priority support, free VPN with selected plans, and more.
In case you do not want to pay for Google Photos, check out some Google Photos alternatives that offer more storage space. And if you are a Google Pixel user, you don’t need to worry about the changes as you can continue to enjoy unlimited High Quality backup in Google Photos for now.